no bake eclair cake;

Happy Thanksgiving! I appreciate how the name of this recipe rhymes too, =P. What’s not to love about a no-bake cake? Especially when it’s got that eclair flair! I’m on a rhyming roll! And the best part about this eclair cake is that the only thing I don’t usually have on hand stocked up in my pantry is cool whip. And you know what I do usually have? Cream. And that makes whipped cream. So this is a perfect recipe to keep on the back-burner for last-minute guests or dinner parties!

Do keep in mind that the longer you let it sit, the more the graham crackers soak up moisture, so ideally you’ll want it to sit overnight. It’s a little like my recipe for icebox cake in that way. But if you don’t mind a little bit firmer texture on the graham crackers, then you can serve it after 3-4 hours.

Speaking of graham crackers, here’s my PSA. After making this recipe with Honey-flavored HoneyMaid graham crackers I’ve declared them awful. Like awful, almost want to throw out the thing I made awful. I would typically prefer to endorse products rather than complain about them, but I feel the need to say this in the hopes that it saves someone else from my mistake. I’ve held out again and again, making excuses like oh they’ve been sitting on my shelf too long, or I must’ve gotten the wrong flavor. But I’ve found HoneyMaid graham crackers literally taste like cardboard. And I don’t mean vaguely-reminiscent dry, I mean the only thing that made them at all tolerable was the pile of whipped topping and chocolate in this recipe. So I’m trying this again as a dessert for Thanksgiving with Nabisco graham crackers. Another alternative is nilla wafers, a bit sweeter, and perfect for crusts, but don’t work as well when you need graham cracker sheets.

I don’t want to end on a negative note, because it is Thanksgiving after all, so: I was happily surprised at how much this recipe really does taste like eclairs! And it must say something that even after icky graham crackers, I wanted to make it again immediately! I only wanted to half-batch the original recipe, so I ended up swirling the chocolate layer with some of the remaining pudding mixture on top, rather than giving it its own layer. (See the original over at Six Sisters Stuff). But the chocolate layer does do that perfect icing thing where the top hardens just enough to keep the inside layer moist and chocolatey.